Most often organizations giving remote access to the insiders and third parties finds it luxurious and convenient. However, the access to their worthy data without stringent preventive measures could cause data breach and security vulnerabilities.
Organizations allow such extended access to their employees so that they could work without being physically available in the workplace. Also, the scam attacks are raising due to such unauthentic access and it is a really uncomplicated pathway for the attackers to accomplish their malicious deeds.
Practices That Increase Vulnerability Chances
Despite the fact that such remote access is the way to enhance work efficiencies, these could also leave you at vulnerability risk. Also, many of the insiders including employees don’t have harmful intentions but their untrained skills create complications.
Some of the unnoticed routine habits that increase the risk of vulnerability are;
- Getting internet connection through unsecured
- Noting down the passwords or sharing it with other colleagues
- Keeping accounts logged in even when it is not in use
- Sending files to personal email accounts or downloading them into an external memory device could also be vulnerable.
Insiders and Third Parties As Threat Vendors
The two mostly reported threat vendors as a result of remote access are either the insiders or the Third Party.
“Insider and third-party access are growing security threats facing organizations and enterprise IT systems”, according to Bomgar.
Most often the insiders are employees that work for the organization at different posts and the third party is those who are associated with the company as suppliers or maybe outsourcers. Most of the organizations completely trust their employees allowing them the authorized access to the information. However, the security professionals while keeping trust in their employees, also admit the fact that they could be a risk to their business.
Whereas, the concern of these professionals is not the detrimental intentions of these individuals but their unskilled data handling. Such unintentional mistakes could lead to the data breaches that could also benefit a cyber criminal to fulfill his malicious deeds. Despite the fact, most of the companies are still unaware that how many of the employees have privileged access to their sensitive data. Yet, 33 percent thinks that their former employees could have corporate network access.
Insiders, Mostly Employees Are Untrained For Such Issues
As told before, most of the employees have desperation towards their work and for that purpose, they use remote access to connect with company’s network. Yet, they pose a risk to organization’s security due to careless approach towards the privacy matters. This might boost the productivity, yet, can adversely affect the business.
Therefore, it is imperative to find out solutions that could cater the productivity demands without upsetting the security.
“It only takes one employee to leave an organization vulnerable,” Bomgar CEO, Dricks said.
“With the continuation of high-profile data breaches, many of which were caused by compromised privileged access and credentials, it’s crucial that organizations control, manage, and monitor privileged access to their networks to mitigate that risk. The findings of this report tell us that many companies can’t adequately manage the risk related to privileged access. Insider breaches, whether malicious or unintentional, have the potential to go undetected for weeks, months, or even years – causing devastating damage to a company.”
Third Parties Causing Data Vulnerabilities
Organizations seeking high profit also tend to increase their supplier’s list who also contribute as an important part in company’s success. Therefore, the network access given by the companies to the third parties in one week has almost doubled from the year 2016.
However, from these organizations, most have already faced the data breach for which third parties were proven as vulnerable vendors in almost 50 percent of the attacks. Also, the remaining ones are suspected to be transferred to third parties. Yet, most of the security professionals think it as an act that has broken their trust on third party vendors.
The problem that deepens the breach affect is the company’s control over the privileged access. Most of the companies are still unable to track the vendor log-ins, however, just 34 percent are completely confident on access to their internal system.
“As with insiders, third-party privileged access presents a multitude of risks to network security. Security professionals must balance the business needs of those accessing their systems – whether insiders or third-parties – with security,” said Dircks.
“As the vendor ecosystem grows, the function of managing privileged access for vendors will need to be better managed through technology and processes that provide visibility into who is accessing company networks, and when, without slowing down business processes,” he added.
How To Avoid Remote Access Threats
Remote access being a tremendous appealing tool could also be risky if not managed properly. Also, you could not completely overrule it as it serves you business a more easy way to flourish. But, in order to maintain the pace and to keep high security, you must follow some preventive measures.
- Restrict access to the people who do not have a strong business Also, allow limited and legitimate people to access your network with personal data.
- Two-way authentication method and strong passwords should be kept for remote access to the accounts.
- Keep authentic anti-virus, anti-malware and firewalls up-to-date.
- Most importantly, train the employees about maintaining the security while accessing the business network from any other location.
Article by Peter Buttler
